Coheed & Cambria Band • Page 16

First 3 records at 10/10 and on my top 100 haha

 

I am HERE for the Backend of Forever love, always been one of my favorite songs by this band.

 

I've always gone back and forth over Good Apollo. Back when it first came out I wasn't as into it as IKS. Some of the weirder, more proggy stuff wasn't really my thing back then, and I didn't immediately latch onto it like I did with IKS. The overwhelming darkness and real-world violence of that record wasn't easy for me to process at the time, I suppose. But listening to it now, I feel totally different about it. My musical taste has developed a lot, and I have matured a lot more as a person as well, so I feel like I'm able to fully appreciate it now. The songs that I loved back then I still love now (Welcome Home, The Suffering, Crossing the Frame, Wake Up) but I have so much more love for the stuff I didn't really care for then. I'm sure I'll go back to this more often in the future than I have in the past.

 

So, in contrast to Good Appollo, NWFT was pretty immediately special for me. I had been down on the band a bit because I didn't respond so well to the decisions they made on GA, but then hearing The Running Free (I think the first song they released) got me completely turned around on them. It was just so huge-sounding and get me excited for the record to come. And it did not disappoint, at all. It's such a great effort. Having the first non-intro track be a totally epic title track instantly recalled IKS in the best possible way; "No World for Tomorrow" is still one of my favorite Coheed songs, almost entirely for the reason that it let me know this was going to be a totally different experience than GA for me. Then the three-song run of The Hound, Feathers, and The Running Free only intensified my instant love for it. And the five-part closing suite is mind-meltingly good. Still to this day, after this re-listen, I pretty much have to rank NWFT behind only IKS and SSTB in terms of my favorite Coheed albums. I love it.

And Feathers remains a total slapper.

 

His is literally word for word my experience with the album.

Looking back I still think parts of that final suite are lacking, but the pre-suite stretch is some of my favorite material by the band.

 

NWFT is not one of my favorites but the title track, Feathers, and Radio Bye Bye are absolute top tier bangers as good as almost any songs on the first 3

 

No World for Tomorrow, Hound of Blood and Rank and Feathers are a great stretch of tunes

The Running Free is one of their worst tracks in my opinion. It starts out so well, and then Claudio comes in with "All non-believers stand aside in fear" which hits no sensible notes within the melody of the song, and it all starts to sound a little sideways from there. The bridge is lame, his vocals sound spastic throughout the song, and aside from a strong but boring chorus its just an odd single choice. I played NHL '09 for like 5 years so maybe I've just heard the song way too many times.

 

Y'all are gonna make me do a discog run aren't you.

 

I think Year of the Black Rainbow is good. I remember people being down on the record because of the production (which is really jarring to hear immediately after NWFT, to be honest) but that never really bothered me, either back when it came out or now. I also like pretty much all of the songs at least on some level. Honestly I was surprised at how positively I responded to a lot of the songs on this thing. The Broken, Here We Are Juggernaut, Far, and Made Out of Nothing especially stand out to me as strong tracks that I still would go so far as to say I actually love. When Skeletons Live is another really good one. I like all of the electronic and industrial-sounding elements they worked in as well. At this point in time I'm probably ready to say that this thing is pretty underrated. I do think that The Black Rainbow is probably the weakest closer from them up to this point.

I will also say that this album was the beginning of me sort of falling off from them, back in the day. For whatever reason, after this one, I never dove too deeply into anything that came after; I only gave the Afterman albums a couple listens and I don't think I've ever even listened to The Color Before the Sun in full before. I don't know why, really, I just kind of moved away from them for a bit, only going back and listening to IKS or SSTB every once in a while and thinking, "Man, I should really get back into these guys" but never following through. Until now.

 

Afterman albums rule.

 

YOTBR is easily my least favorite Coheed album. I thought the Afterman albums were a great return to form.

YOTBR just... doesn't sound like Coheed to me. The production is all over the place, Chris never really fit in as a drummer with them, and the songs are just too straight-forward to me on the album, with not a whole lot of interesting and exciting moments, outside of 3ish songs. I still enjoy it occasionally, but overall, it was a disappointment for me.

 

I still love Taylor Hawkins drumming in NWFT

 

It took me years to realize that the Reaping is meant to mirror Always and Never and not keeping the blade lol

 

YOTBR is a hot mess with about 4 really good tracks.

 

It's a shame because Here We Are Juggernaut is by far their best music video

 

YOTBR has real bad production but the songs are there for the most part. also my least favorite by them

NWFT is great as an album but disappointing as a story ending. still not 100% whats really going on in it either, aside from stuff Claudio has outright said and the events that are more blatantly expressed on the album (the calm before the storm, the big battle, the fall of the House Atlantic, the showdown between Claudio and Wilhelm, pretty much everyone is dead) maybe if/when we get the graphic novels that will clear it up. the final suite is pretty dope, Feathers slaps, Gravemaker and Gunslingers is super underrated as is Justice In Murder.

SSTB is my favorite

 

I gotta dive into coheeds discography. The new tour sounds fun.

 

I've settled in on GA1 being my favorite. I'm a sucker for the prog elements on it

 

NWFT starts off strong, but I felt like it was trying too hard to be like GA with the suite at the end, which doesn't come close to the Willing Well series.

The Broken, World of Lines, and In the Flame of Error are all top tier off YOTBR though, surrounded by a lot of inconsistency.

 

So, The Afterman albums. First, I definitely think I prefer Descension to Ascension; I've never been the hugest fan of Holly Wood and Vic the Butcher, and they bring it down a bit for me despite the absolute greatness of Domino and Evagria. I do really enjoy the non-Entity tracks on Ascension a lot as well. But, come on, I mean Sentry the Defiant is an all-timer, and the stretch of Number City-Gravity's Union-Away We Go is just so solid. Plus I think Iron Fist is a very good Coheed ballad, personally. And 2's My Favourite 1, what needs to be said about that track other than it's such a wonderful closer and such a great track in general. The decision, for me, is easy.

But overall they're really, really good. I'd probably rank them at four and five after IKS-SSTB-NWFT. I definitely agree with @Joe4th that these are total "return to form" efforts after they really put themselves out there and experimented on YOTBR (the success of which experimentation is obviously a point of contention). They're really interesting from a lore standpoint as well, just fleshing out the world of the Keywork and explaining what Heaven's Fence actually is in a really satisfying way. I should really have been listening to these albums more often over the last almost six years, I regret not doing so.

 

Claudio's vocal performance for Iron Fist is one of my favorites of his

 

All my first favorite Coheed songs are on IKSOSE:3 (Blood Red Summer, A Favor House Atlantic, title track, The Crowing, The Light and the Glass) so that gets my vote

Good Apollo is close behind, its a fantastic follow up

Things periodically went a bit off the rails from there

 

No one talking about the Color Before the Sun lol

 

Descension is so good that I never listen to Ascension ever lol. Color before the sun is right in between them for me

 

Last album I remember was YOTBR and I fell off from this band with that. Spotify makes it seem like they've wrote 407 albums since then, but is anything post YOTBR worth checking into?